


On Somatic Soundtracks and the Dissonance Thereof

by Cici_Nota



Series: In Which A Series Of Poor Decisions Leads To Consequences [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cici_Nota/pseuds/Cici_Nota
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poor Decisions prequel made of unabashed fluff in which Rodimus orders Ultra Magnus to stop worrying. Magnus tries, he really does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Somatic Soundtracks and the Dissonance Thereof

“Rodimus, are you even listening?” Ultra Magnus couldn’t ignore the increasingly intricate scorched doodles on the desk any further; the problem wasn’t that Rodimus was scribbling in the first place, but that he’d nearly dropped the laser scalpel. It was in the process of burning a hole right through the top of his desk.

“What?” Rodimus blinked, clicking the scalpel off. “Oh. Yes. Of course I’m listening.”

“I’m not convinced,” Magnus said, struggling to keep his voice even at one more mishap in a day already full to the brim with broken rules and a complete disregard for protocol. His fingers tightened on the remaining stack of reports, all but crushing them before he realized what he was doing and abruptly let go. The tablets clattered to the floor.

“Okay,” Rodimus said, and got up.  “Whatever that was? It can wait. You’re way too tightly wound to be effective at… at anything.”

“I’m not tightly wound.” It was a conscious effort not to grit his teeth, not to stand rigid with tension and frustration.

“Right.” Rodimus circled around behind him and pushed him toward a bench in front of the window. “Sit down.”

“What are you doing?” Magnus was letting himself be pushed, more out of a sense of resignation to whatever Rodimus had planned than anything else.

“Sit,” Rodimus repeated.  Magnus sat.  He nearly jumped to his feet when Rodimus sat down next to him and wriggled underneath his arm.

“What…” he started, but simply repeating his previous question didn’t seem like it held enough emphasis.

“Let it go,” Rodimus said, shifting around until he was pressed against Magnus’ side, one arm draped across Magnus’ midsection. “Just stop worrying for a little while.”

Magnus opened his mouth to protest, but Rodimus glared.

“It’s an order,” he said, and Magnus tried to follow it. He really tried. Evaluations of various potential scenarios in which something went wrong – one of the crew members doing something ill advised, an external threat, something else hidden on the Lost Light itself – kept flashing through his mind, interspersed with replays of the myriad breaches of regulations that he’d failed to stop since that morning.

To make matters worse, he could hear Rodimus’ somatic soundtrack start running itself ragged as his captain performed the most difficult action conceivable – that of sitting still. At any moment now, it was going to become excruciatingly clear that he was failing to follow orders, and Rodimus was going to lose patience entirely, and it was just one more blow against the core of what Ultra Magnus _was_.

Almost in desperation, Magnus reached out to the only distraction he could create without obviously disobeying orders, and started to hum.  Rodimus twitched and looked up.

“ _You_ like music?” he said, almost accusatorily. It wasn’t a question, and Magnus was therefore not required by regulation to respond. He just kept humming, and Rodimus started to listen. Magnus could hear him relax through the melody, the slow winding down of an agitated system reaching a peaceful equilibrium.  It was almost but not quite a surprise to realize that he’d somehow come to relax as well, the aggravated tics of stress and strain that had been echoing under his skin fading almost entirely.

The melody ended, and Magnus chose a new one, moving from one to the next as the stars hung outside the window. The moment seemed as if it would stretch on forever, outside a sense of time, and then it was over.

The door slid open to admit the Lost Light’s third in command.

“No, really, what are you doing?” Drift asked, and Magnus almost tensed in reaction. There was no accusation in Drift’s voice, though, just a sense of amused resignation. Magnus didn’t even feel more than a vague sense of the usual urge to throw Drift in the brig for past war crimes.

“I’m under orders to stop worrying,” he said, because Drift was looking at him and not Rodimus.

“Oh. Well. In that case. Carry on.” Drift put his data tablet on Rodimus’ desk with a click.

“I’m awake,” Rodimus mumbled against Magnus’ chest.  “I’m listening.”

Drift smiled, almost helplessly, and then hastily rearranged his face into a sterner expression when he saw Magnus looking. Magnus didn’t _quite_ smile back.

END


End file.
